


Music full of memories

by ashcat



Series: Secrets Series [2]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen, Music, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-06
Updated: 2010-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-09 23:12:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashcat/pseuds/ashcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal Caffrey can't read sheet music, but he can play piano.    <br/>Part 2 of the Secrets Series: Five things Neal has never revealed to anyone about his past and one about his present</p>
            </blockquote>





	Music full of memories

**Author's Note:**

> HUGE thanks to hawkclowd, daria234, afiawri, elrhiarhodan and geoviki for various bits of help and encouragement. All remaining mistakes are of course mine :)

June's parlor is awash with the melancholy sounds of Debussy's "The girl with flaxen hair". Neal feels surrounded by his ghosts tonight, and the languid melody is soothing as his fingers dance across the piano keys, a soft secret smile on his lips.

"That's beautiful, Neal." June came to stand by him, still dressed in her black evening gown and heels.

Neal quickly lifts his fingers, the final notes played echoing as he turns, his charming smile plastered on his face. "June, I didn't hear you come in."

"I didn't know you played." She smiles at him, then looks down towards his hands, neatly folded in his lap.

"I thought you weren't coming back tonight." Neal holds onto his grin, despite his frustration at being interrupted.

"Plans changed." June shrugs, her sparkling gown shifting, light playing across the many sequins. She lay a hand on the piano top. "My daughter would sit here for hours hammering out soul music."

"It's a lovely piano. I hope you don't mind me using it?" Neal keeps his hands steady and still, despite how they itch to return to the keys.

"I'm glad to see someone making use of it. Maybe you can play for me and my friends sometime."

"Perhaps." Neal doesn't play for anyone. The piano is an escape, a respite, a comfort to him; it's also a very private endeavor. He's never played for anyone but his grandmother.

"There's sheet music inside the bench and in the top drawers of the armoire," she gestured to the imposing peice of furniture in the corner. "You are welcome to use it."

"Thank you, I'll look through them." Neal turned his smile up a few watts as he smoothly lies.

"I will leave you to it, then." She smiles and trails her fingers over the piano top one more time.

Neal rises to give her a chaste kiss on the cheek. "Good night."

Neal returns to playing after a quick check of the surrounding rooms; he doesn't want to be surprised by anyone else tonight. As he plays the first few notes of "My Way", he closes his eyes and let's his mind drift in thoughts of his grandmother...

His grandmother told him that he learned to play piano at four, on her lap, watching her fingers as she demonstrated how to match the keys to the music they were listening to. They'd sing along as they did it, easy songs like "Jesus loves me" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"; the same songs her mother had taught her when she wasn't much older than Neal, and the same songs she'd tried to teach her own daughter, Grace. But Grace hadn't had the same talent that her son did. Where Grace had had to labor for hours to play even the simplest song, Neal had been a fast learner. He was able to quickly and easily mimic his grandmothers finger's movements as he watched her play.

She'd moved on to teaching him simple versions of songs like "Go tell it on the Mountain" and "Amazing Grace", songs she'd played for years at the First Baptist Church. His chubby little fingers picked out melodies in the path of her own, their voices lifted in song. In his minds eye, he can still see her hands as clear as day. Her long thin fingers, joints always a little red, swollen with the arthritis that she wouldn't let stop her from playing, her skin so thin that it was almost translucent, fragile, all of her life's trials and joys marked there. Those hands had always shown him nothing but love, whether they were playing a piano, rolling out biscuit dough, or rubbing his back as he lay awake after another nightmare in the sticky heat of the Georgia summer.

What he remembers most about his grandmother was her unwavering _love_ for him, love that didn't have any strings or caveats attached.

He never had to worry that her hands or words would strike out towards him in anger; she was always patient and gentle with him, despite how downright precocious he could be. Once the summer was over, he often reminded himself of her love once he had returned to whatever country his father was now stationed in. He used his memories of her as a shield when his father's words turned into daggers and tried to rend his heart in two.

The image he held in his mind during those dark times was the one he felt encapsulated all that was perfect and good about her. It was how she glowed when she performed for him. When she'd literally let her hair down from its usual tight, iron gray bun and perform her favorite songs. The songs she and his grandfather had danced to when they were courting, Dinah Shore and Patti Page numbers that she would later put on the record player when she sought to teach Neal to dance. She always said that he looked like his grandfather, his namesake. Sometimes she'd tell him he looked like her son, Albert, with tears in her eyes. Neal had inherited their dark curls, fair coloring, and strong chin; these similarities his only ties to his loved ones who had already passed on.

Sometimes, she taught him the songs she'd played for fussy babies to get them to sleep, lullabys that her mother had taught her. Neal liked to remember those, humming them softly to himself when he would lay awake in his room, back with his father. The songs reminded him of his mother and grandmother, reminded him that he was loved and cared for despite the great distance dividing them.

When Neal was very young, she'd played "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "Father Abraham" for him, same as she had for little Gracie and Albert, to dance and sing to. She taught him those songs so that he'd be able to play them for his own children one day. Neal had always pulled a face when she talked about his future family; at eight he'd only gotten so far as holding hands with Nicole, and that was before their last move.

His Grandmother had always been a Dean Martin fan, and she'd sing "That's Amore" while Neal laughed at the silly lyrics, still young enough to not understand romantic love. She'd sing "Imagine" with tears rolling down her face because it was the song Grace had begged to learn when she was fourteen and the one Grace had sang at Albert's funeral after they'd sent his body back home from the jungles. Neal and his Grandmother would visit Albert's grave, along with his grandfathers and mothers. They brought flowers and knelt to pray there every Saturday morning because she said it was important to _remember_.

She would always finish up with Sinatra's "My Way". She would improvise a little ditty at the end as she said "My Way" was for her present, the others all linked to her past. She always reminded Neal to remember his past - but not to be imprisoned by it. To learn from his failures as he planned for the future, but never let them define who he was.

And always, _always,_ live in the present, to find joy and happiness in whatever he did.

After she'd played him a concert of her favorite songs, she would stand, smoothing her long fall of hair over her shoulder, and curtsy as much as her knees would allow to Neal's enthusiastic cheers and applause. Her face would be red from her exertions and her blue eyes, the same shade as Neal's and Grace's, would practically radiate with her love for him and for life. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and in that moment he thought there was nothing his grandmother couldn't do.

All of Neal's best memories from his childhood were wrapped up in that small house in Decatur, Georgia; it was the only place in all the world that ever felt like home. His feelings about his own playing are all tied up with the warmth and safety he always felt when with his grandmother there. And in honor of that, in deference to the overwhelming boon of those memories he never learned to read sheet music. After all, he could always sit and carefully pick out any melody he wanted to play, just as she had taught him to do.


End file.
